Alicia Schrikker is Senior Lecturer in colonial and global history at Leiden University. She works on everyday colonialism in the Indian Ocean throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, through a focus on sites and moments of exchange and interaction.Carolien Stolte is Senior Lecturer at Leiden University, the Netherlands. Her research focuses on the international history of South Asia. She co-led, with Su-Lin Lewis, the AHRC Research Network "Afro-Asian Networks in the Early Cold War".

• Preface Facing World History: inspirations, institutions, networks; Carolien Stolte and Alicia Schrikker Interviews Interview with Brij V. Lal, Historian of Indenture and of Contemporary Fiji 'I end up with the question "why", but I don't start with it': Interview with Geoff rey Parker The Importance of Knowledge-Systems: Interview with John Rankine Goody The Best of Two Worlds: Interview with Om Prakash The Study of Contrasts across Europe: Interview with Patrick O'Brien History is Placing a Man in the Context of his Times: Interview with the Late Ashin Das Gupta (1932–1998) 'I didn't get into history to avoid math or physics': Interview with Patricia Seed, Professor of Rice University A Sea of Histories, a History of the Seas: Interview with Adrian B. Lapian Sympathetic 'Farangi': Interview with Michael N. Pearson Why Is China So Big? And Other Big Questions: Interview with John E. Wills, Jr. Slavery, Migration and the Atlantic World: Interview with Piet Emmer 'I am not going to call myself a global historian': Interview with C.A. Bayly The Retreat of the Elephants: Interview with Mark Elvin Wanting to know everything in a complex world: Interview with Allison Blakely Transoceanic Trade: The Reconstruction of Al-Mukhâ through VOC Records: Interview with C.G. Brouwer World History and Other Marginal and Perverse Pursuits: Interview with Felipe Fernandez-Armesto Studying Southeast Asia in and for Southeast Asia: Interview with Anthony Reid The Red-Haired Barbarian from Leiden: Interview with Leonard Blussé You turn a page and then there is suddenly something on a turtle': Interview with Jürgen Osterhammel Are We All Global Historians Now?: Interview with David Armitage Lessons from African History: between the deep and the shallow ends of social theory and historical empiricism. Interview with Frederick Cooper 'Being speculative is better than to not do it at all': Interview with Natalie Zemon Davis Map-Making in World History: Interview with Kären Wigen 'My favourite source is the landscape': Interview with Robert Ross History as Renegade Politics: Interview with Ann Laura Stoler Bibliography of World Historians Bibliography of World History